Lauded pianist
Helen Sung is an adroit improviser with a bent toward straight-ahead jazz and post-bop. Arriving in New York in the early 2000s, she grew to wider fame as the winner of the 2007 Mary Lou Williams Piano Competition. Along with albums by
Joe Chambers,
Ronnie Cuber, and
Terri Lyne Carrington,
Sung has released her own highly regarded efforts including the 2006 trio date
Helenistique, 2010's Going Express, and 2014's
Anthem for a New Day, the latter of which featured longtime associates saxophonist
Seamus Blake and trumpeter
Ingrid Jensen. She has also collaborated on projects like 2018's Sung with Words with poet Dana Gioia and 2021's
Quartet+ with the string ensemble
Harlem Quartet.
A native of Houston, Texas,
Sung grew up the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. From the age of nine, she studied classical piano and attended Houston's High School for the Performing Arts before earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees in classical piano from the University of Texas at Austin. It was during her time in college that
Sung became interested in jazz, and after graduating in 1995 she enrolled in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, which was then at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. Eventually,
Sung relocated to New York City. She has performed with a bevy of name artists including trumpeter
Clark Terry, drummer
Terri Lyne Carrington, saxophonist
Wayne Shorter, trumpeter
Jon Faddis, and many others, and plays regularly with the
Mingus Big Band. On her own, she has released several albums, including 2004's
Push, 2006's
Helenistique, and 2007's
Sungbird (After Albeniz), all of which showcase her sophisticated approach to acoustic jazz.
In 2010,
Sung teamed up with saxophonist
Seamus Blake, bassist
Lonnie Plaxico, and drummer
Eric Harland on Going Express. Her first quintet album,
Anthem for a New Day, arrived in 2014, featuring trumpeter
Ingrid Jensen,
Blake, and others. In 2018, she collaborated with poet Dana Gioia on the jazz and spoken word album Sung with Words. On the heels of being named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow,
Sung released
Quartet+, a collaboration with the jazz and classical ensemble
Harlem Quartet. ~ Matt Collar